Songs That Keep The Memories
by after.a.hard.day
Summary: It was supposed to be just a simple mission to Mist, get a scroll and come back. Things are never that simple for Team Seven. //Random Two-Shot about Ninja/Civilian contact.//
1. Chapter 1

Songs That Keep The Memories.

--

Disclaim ownership of source material

--

Natoko came to me one day when I was in the kitchen. I don't care if you like or hate her, hate this plot, think she is mary-sue or frustrating and cliché. I liked her enough to write her down. She made me giggle. Just enjoy. I tried to make it amusing. There will be a second part when I get around to writing it.

P.o.n. Team 7 days. This is in a limbo of plot. Random references all over the shop.

--

Music: Fields of Gold - (version by: ) Sting.

--

The mission was fairly simple. Go to the land of mist, collect scroll, come back. Get some money. Chill for the rest of the day then go on another mission. At most it would have taken a week.

But when its Team 7, nothing is ever that simple.

Half way there, a group of surprisingly skilled rogue ninja appeared. They were defeated, but unfortunately, Kakashi passed out.

They lugged Kakashi to the closest village, where no one would help them, until rather abruptly in the town square, Team Seven spotted a woman screaming at a market vendor, telling him that she wasn't going to pay full price for that bag of rice, because there were metal weights in the bottom, and it was not a kilo. The vendor sneered at her and lifted a rather threatening knife at the woman, leaving Kakashi with Sakura on a bench, Sasuke and Naruto went to the woman who now had a knife at her neck. Sasuke tackled the man and Naruto dragged the woman away who yelled threats (you bloody bastard! Goddamn thief! I'll get you I will!).

Once the situation was averted, Sasuke politely asked if she could help them. The woman sneered, and they noticed for the first time the large bandanna that ran across her face, in a similar style to Kakashi's headband, covering her right eye, only the scars didn't run just down like Kakashi's did, it seemed a giant scratch mark, three lines, out from the bandanna, one across her cheek bone, another across her nose and the last reaching to her left eyebrow.

She glared at them and sneeringly replied that she didn't help ninja.

At which point, Sakura shoved Naruto and Sasuke out of the way, and though being infinitely smaller than the woman, poked her hand in the chest, demanding help, because they had just saved her life and so help her kami-sami if she didn't help the, she would show her why she was ninja.

The woman sneered and grit her teeth.

"Fine, I'm the local healer, but I don't know any fancy chakra remedies, but you lot can rest where I am. Pick him up and move."

It seemed a contradiction that this decidedly vicious and incredibly uncaring -ninja hating, thought Naruto- woman was a healer.

And so that was how they ended up, once again, completely off track from what was supposed to be just a simple mission

--

Kakashi groaned and rolled over. The bed he was in was stiff cotton sheets with that smell of something that has been cleaned so many times it doesn't really have a smell anymore.

Where was he now?

"Sensei?" Right, okay, mission, and that was Sakura, and above her kneeling beside him, was Naruto and distantly behind him was Sasuke leaning against a wall.

Groan, it all came back now.

At least they were all safe.

He gingerly pushed himself up, only to have Sakura push him back down.

"Sorry Kakashi-sensei, but you can't get up yet. We were told by the healer that you weren't aloud to yet." That timid little apologetic smile was on her face. He realised she was right, he was shaking already from just that exertion.

"Damn straight he isn't." He looked to the side, where the door had opened, there the, he guessed, was the healer. "Good job Sakura, at least you listen to what you are told."

The healer walked forward into the room, he observed the food she had and his stomach growled, loudly. The woman smirked. "I thought so," she knelt opposing Sakura, and over Kakashi's currently invalid body, passed her the soup. "Feed him, I aint." She got up and left the room. Kakashi blinked.

"…is she?"

"She hates ninja." Sasuke supplied from the wall he seemed to be attached to.

Naruto grinned. "You should have seen how Sakura-chan handled her when she said she wouldn't help us. Threatened her and everything."

He knew Sakura was blushing as she fetched an extra pillow to prop him up with. If he had the energy he might of smiled. Sakura came back and went about setting him up to eat with surprising ease. Two pillows under his head, sent Naruto and Sasuke out of the room, the whole time keeping her eyes lowered so she wouldn't see his face properly above his chin. It had something to do with seeing his face and it not being fair if the other two weren't in the room.

He really didn't get his genin team sometimes.

--

Two days later he was up and walking, still unsteady on his feet so they could not leave to get the scroll.

They barely saw the healer, she would randomly appear to give them food, give them check ups (even Sakura, Sasuke and Naruto) then disappear again.

It was about the third time this happened that he realised he didn't know the woman's name.

"I'm Kakashi Hatake."

She glared. "I didn't ask."

"But I told you anyway, so it would be polite to tell me it back."

She crossed her arms and snorted. "Do I look polite to you?"

"Well, no, not really. But still, there is light in the dark isn't there?"

She snorted again, this time mildly amused as apposed to just straight agitated. "I suppose so. I'm Natoka."

"No last name?"

"No reason to, some of us aren't going to be remember long enough to need one." she laughed at his raised eyebrow and gathered up the bowl of soup.

--

When the remnants of the party of rogue ninja found them to try and extract revenge. Part of Natoka's house was burnt down. Their one week of Kakashi's recovery was extended to three as it was partially their fault that she had now lost their guest quarters.

They found out, randomly really, that Natoka had two daughters, a year younger then them, who after the attack, were found huddle with their mother in their corner. Surprisingly, Natoka had gone into some acute form of shock at the attack and her two daughters were trying desperately to get her to calm down and when Kakashi came into the room, they launched themselves at him telling him to help their mother because she was doing 'it' again.

The girls were called Naomi and Midori.

It was what Naruto wonder why she was so hateful of ninja. Natoka didn't seem the type of woman that froze up when this sort of thing happened. But when she finally came to her right mind, Naruto watched as she pulled her daughters close and sobbed in their hair.

He saw a mothers love then and felt a stab of things he hadn't felt for a very long time. He'd never had a mother to clutch close.

--

Some sort of truce happened that day, she no longer hated them as much. They played with Naomi and Midori when they weren't helping re-build the house.

Naomi and Midori looked very little like their mother, both were light eyed and light hair. A shocking mix of orange red against blue eyes that were a sea to Naruto's sky. But still, Naruto still liked to call them sisters and they called him big brother.

It was incredible to watch as Natoka would embrace her girls close, call them sea spirits and it finally made sense how she was a healer.

--

Natoka hit Sasuke across the back of the head.

"You idiot! You had a clear opening there!"

He frowned at the board game. "Huh?"

"You ninja think you are so brilliant with your tactical skill, but can't even apply it to a normal simple thing like board game. You have a opportunity! Use it!"

Sasuke stared at her, then down at the board again, then back up at her. "I did?"

"Yes, now I'll let you have your turn again, this time don't be so stupid." She moved his piece back again.

--

"You really love him, don't you?"

Sakura jumped and turned around, staring at Natoka.

"Y-yes… but everyone tells me its just a crush."

"I've seen crushes. I've had crushes. Your eyes hurt to much to look at when you think about him for it to just be a crush."

Sakura blushed, ducking her head under her bangs and bit her lip. "Sometimes its like staring at blank wall when I try to tell someone what I feel. I'm not meant to be in love. I don't think I should be either, but I don't know what else to call this… this thing I feel. I didn't even think it was love, until I thought he died."

"Well, your life-span is half the time of normal peoples, you are ninja, though you don't seem to be very good at it. Better to find now, spring time of your life or whatever."

Sakura giggled and her blush faded. "I don't want to tell anyone, because, it just sounds so stupid."

"Mmmm. You have a wide forehead." Sakura looked outraged and ashamed. "Over here, in the aristocracy, that's fashionable and a sign of intelligence. Women deliberately pluck their hair-line back. You intelligence is impressive by the standards. You work out if what you feel is stupid."

--

Piece by piece they found out information about Natoka and her two daughters. The first thing she told them that the girls father was never around, and that he never would be and it was some what of a fairy story for the girls as to his identity so if they ruined it for them, (this was particularly aimed at the male members of the ground as Sakura understood the importance of fairy-tales) that she would nail their balls to the wall and would display them as a ornament, telling all her visitors about it so help her god if they ruined it for her daughters too early.

--

Naruto knew of the cruelty of ninjas, but some how he had never really understood the effects, but he understood it clearly when Natoka pulled off her bandanna and showed them exactly the cruelty of a ninja.

As he vaguely suspected, her right eye was gone. But the grizzled mess under the bandanna, the patch of hair that was missing and the just complete mauling of that quarter of her face, he didn't resent her so much for hating ninja, but it still made him ask that age old questions (of at least, his life) that what did he have to do with it? Why did he have to suffer for someone else judgement?

But he understood the fear and the loneliness as she explained that she herself had wanted to be a ninja but had been rejected on account of her own less then perfect health, and took a resentment at young age at a broken dream to all of them, and one day (stupid) day she had baited one of them as being weak. He had attacked her, thus resulting her now present face.

For the first half of the night, he traced his fingers over his face, thanking kami that his face was without such hideousness. Thinking about Iruka and Kakashi, and even Ibiki. Some how their scars weren't so bad, because they had been able to defend themselves, at least, or something like that. He didn't quiet understand it himself, but their suffering seemed in a different category to hers, no less painful or emotionally perhaps maybe because they were ninja it seemed less… intense, because scars happened, they were ninja… but she wasn't, he mused.

She was also very stupid.

Shut up Kyuubi.

The second half of the night, he went up to go to the bathroom. Coming back he came upon a most interesting site. Kakashi was in the kitchen with Natoka, who was doing the washing up. He said something to her and Natoka laughed in that bitter sarcastic way of hers back.

"You are a strange man Hatake Kakashi-san." She flicked a soapy spud at him and he got out of the way with ease.

"There is more that you didn't want to say, about the twins."

She sighed. "What do you want me to tell you? What exactly would it prove by telling you, that yes I was raped and that resulted in the twins? That my sweet heart hated me after that, that no man wanted me, that I left the hidden village in shame, that I was a whore to my own family? Is that what you wanted to hear, Kakashi-san? Tell me? Because what does it change if you know?"

"… I'll request to have your name written on the monument in Konoha."

The dishes clattered to the bottom of the sink.

"Are you joking, you stupid man? One, I am not a _ninja_, let alone from your _village_. Two, I'm not dead _yet_! Three I haven't done _anything_. I know what that monument is for, you idiot."

For some reason it was amusing to hear Kakashi get called 'idiot' and 'stupid' so repeatedly.

"You said that you weren't important enough to have a last name. I'll make your name important, as repayment for what ninja have done to you."

She laughed, that bitter one again. "Repayment? There is only one sort of repayment I want."

"What is that?"

"That when I die, and die I shall, relatively soon, this you know too, don't you? That Konoha accepts my daughters. Let them do what they want. Whenever they turn up."

Naruto blinked, she was dieing? She didn't show it…

"Yes I know you are dieing, I'd have to be stupid not to see how you will occasionally clutch at doors. I thought for awhile you were pregnant again, but since that is out of the question…"

"Some sort of tumour, I am not sure. I told you I had health difficulties. No fancy chakra here. A year or two at most. I've got a lot of money put aside for them. They'll be awhile coming, no doubt they will wonder around before they figure it out. I've left them a letter with instructions. But accept them. Let them become ninja if they want, I am not sure what they want to do. But when they come to your care, look after them, for me, please? That is the only price I will accept if you are offering repayment."

He nodded. When a person had resigned themselves to death, Naruto realised, there was little else could be said to change them.

"You would have made a fine ninja." Kakashi murmered, coming close to touch her shoulder.

Privately Naruto agreed.

"Thank-you. I'd like to have been good if I had made it."

"Is there anything else, that I can give you?"

She turned to him, and Naruto surprisingly realised she came up to his nose. He also rather hated this fact that when she pulled down his mask to kiss him, he didn't see his sensei's face. Natoka grabbed Kakashi's wrist and took him out of the room. His acute heard Kakashi press her against a wall and her mutter her last request. "Let me be a woman again. No man has touched me since."

Naruto decided it was definitely time to go.

--

End part 1.

--

Part 2 will consist of some other stuff. Look out for it. Cause its cool, yo.

This is just a experiment of Civilian/Ninja relations and me guessing that some people hate ninja's. I think I would if I wasn't one of them. Acting like they ruled the place xD Sorry for the drabble style. I was experimenting.

And because I am sure someone will go. 'OMG YOU EAT SMALL BABIES FOR THIS FANFICTION. DIE HEATHEN DIE.' I say yes, I am heathen (no seriously), and yes, your first born tasted yummy. You should try it with sauce.

--

After.a.hard.day

--


	2. Chapter 2

_Songs that Keep the Memories_

_--_

_Disclaim ownership of source material_

Enjoy everyone, I did try rather hard at this.

_--_

_Part 2. _

_--_

"_Sasuke, please stop!"_

_This is stupid, don't say it, don't say it._

Work out if it feels stupid or not.

"I'll scream, I'll wake everyone up. I _love_ you Sasuke."

"…thank-you."

--

"You bastard! Why are you doing this?"

"…Because I have a opportunity. I was told once, that you should never miss opportunities… especially ninja."

"You are being stupid Sasuke,"

"No, for the first time… I'm being smart. We all have goals. Haku to Zabuza, Natoka to her daughters. You know that. I have my duty. My duty to kill my brother."

"That's not a duty Sasuke! That's a selfish goal!"

"For you maybe, but I have thought of nothing but it all my life."

"Live a little longer, find other things to live for. Find someone to live for."

"… I don't want to. It ended up destroying them, I can't deal with that kinda pain again."

--

Kakashi was half surprised when Tsunade called him into her office once morning on the edge of spring that reminded him of stealth missions in Mist.

Of course it would, he mused. When else would they turn up?

There sat Midori and Naomi, shoving down food like they hadn't eaten in days.

He looked at them again, the probably hadn't.

Elbows poked out from stick arms. Red hair was kept in a plait that had no shine from dirt. Pale skin under freckles that should have been a nice healthy tan colour, those blue eyes were shadowed with dark lines.

But they were smiling, and he knew they hadn't changed.

"These are the ones that you had mentioned to the Third? And to me?"

He nodded once.

"They can't read or write, are so scrawny they look like could snap and have no last name like bastard S-Class Missing-nin. What am I supposed to do with them?"

"… don't separate them. They'll figure out what they want to do. But I promised their mother they would be allowed into Konoha."

Tsunade gave him a hard look. "A big promise."

"Would you turn them away?"

"…No. Tell me everything you know about them."

The twins were ushered out (to a different room to be examined by Shizune).

(Midori and Naomi were sorely disappointed when they were told they had to slow down on the eating.)

--

Kakashi slouched in his seat, head turned to the side, looking at the window.

"What do you know?"

"As I told you, when Team Seven was still…" choke, swallow, get over it. "… we were picking up a scroll from Mist. On the way there, we were attacked and had to seek refuge. Thanks to Sakura's help we got it from Natoka, a local herbal healer. I think the woman had a last name, but didn't keep it. She _hated_ ninja. When she was younger, she tried out of the academy in Mist, and was rejected for poor health. This made her quiet bitter towards them, and she liked to openly spite them and insult them." his eye crinkled distantly at the memory. "She did this once too often, and instigated the rage of a group of Mist-nin, they raped her and tore out her left eye, rather brutally scaring her face."

Tsunade cringed. Kakashi would of too if he couldn't remember the way she held her face with such pride.

"She was pregnant and left the village in shame, everyone rejected her, even her own family it seemed and her love interest. She went to a smaller village surrounding in the country side, raising her two daughters."

"Natoka most defiantly came from a ninja line, to have such emphasis on becoming one. Due to the rather… uncontrolled chakra I sensed in her, I have the feeling she may have been suppressing a bloodline. But that could also be that she was dieing, quiet progressed by the time we reached her."

"… she was dieing already? She knew this? Why did she not send the children with you immediately."

"Natoka was selfish woman, she loved her daughters, she wanted every bit of time with them she could."

"And where have they been the last… two years?"

"How should I know? Look at them, really look at them, and it would have been any ones guess."

"To quote a certain chuunin, its rather _troublesome_, when I am trying to say a formal good-bye to the _Kazekage_ and his siblings, and two rather spirited girls bound up to me, declaring loudly that _I_ can't be the _Hokage_, because the Hokage is a kindly _man _isn't he? But if he is away and I am temporarily in charge could they _please_ get direction to _Otaa-san Kakashi_, and Oooh look, that must be _Gaara-kun _that _Naruto-niisan _told them about, _Gaara-kun_, can you make us a sandcastle. _Please _Gaara-_kun_?" she groaned and slumped her hands in her face. "Then the damnable sand brat had the gall to raise an eyebrow and send his sand to catch the two of them when they promptly passed out in a heap."

"Well, _did _Gaara make them a sand castle?"

Sometimes it was a good thing he was impassive to even a Uchiha's glare.

"I could look into their minds if you want?"

"I don't want you to, but I think, after everything, it might be in the best interest, at least to shut the council up, the added possibility of the bloodline limit may smooth it a bit more for them."

"You really don't trust them?"

"After Orochimaru, no."

"This is wrong, but alright."

--

Midori and Naomi stared up at him with large imploring eyes.

"When can we see Naruto-niisan?"

"Not for awhile, he is training far away."

Their faces fell identically. "Oh."

"Sakura-chan?"

"Relatively sooner, she is at her Chuunin exams at the moment. Becoming a stronger ninja."

The looked marginally brighter.

"and Sasuke-kun?" they had picked up _that _annoying habit from Sakura.

"… not for a very, very long time. Sasuke has left, probably for good." Probably for death. But he _really _didn't want to say that.

They looked so confused he knew what their next question was going to be, so he immediately changed the topic. "I am sorry about this, but it is a necessary precaution for entering the village, but I am going to have to use my special eye again to see into your minds, alright?"

The nodded, swinging their feet in time, toes barely scraping the ground. They were tiny. Smaller even than Naruto at that age. Their voices were far more childish, but he supposed, that they had been fending for themselves with no role model so there had been no need to change what had always worked. They still looked seven.

He went to Midori first, pulling up his headband and stared into her mind. As he thought, hills were green in the mist of their childhood. The same thing in Naomi's mind. He smiled. Maybe their was something worth fighting for left in the world. Maybe it was just mist covered hills inside a child's memory.

--

After reports had been filed and they had been accepted into Konoha, Kakashi would visit them everyday that he could. About the third week he took them to the monument. "This is your mothers name, here see, Na-to-ka"

They stared very hard the letters, making no sense of them what-so-ever, after all, they had only begun the alphabet the week before.

They were 13, he had no idea what they had seen, but he figured reading and writing were the least of their troubles, especially when they were both so adamant at becoming ninja.

"Mother was pregnant." Naomi piped up randomly as they sat at a bench overlooking Konoha.

Kakashi choked. "W-what?"

"That's why you are our Otaa-san. You made Mother hold her stomach and sigh and whisper about a man that made her alive. We know that's where we came from, and if you made her like that, and that's where we came from, so if you made her like that, so that means you are our father." Midori continued, twisted child's logic that was so far removed that you couldn't actually find a loophole with it. "You are better than any of the Daddy's we'd made up." Some how he didn't want to.

His eyes were so wide, he was glad they probably didn't realise.

"A-and, what happened to the child?"

"She made it go away before her stomach swelled like the village ladies. She kept saying she was sorry. But it was making her light go away faster. Even though she burned brighter with it." Naomi turned to Midori. "Its always like that, if you make it burn to quickly and brightly, it does real fast."

"Too fast." Midori nodded solemnly.

"And then you have nothing. Best let it just go natural." Naomi nodded back.

_He'd had a child, briefly, he'd had a child_…

He didn't resent her for aborting early. She wouldn't have outlived the pregnancy from the sound of it. He was here and she was there, and what was it but one night to feel alive?

What was life but one night to feel alive?

--

Naruto got the shock of his life after returning from saving the Kazekage. Well it wasn't really a shock because he was never really shocked, more a surprised blink when he had come out of the Hokages office and two bright eyes that were more sea than his sky stared brightly up at him.

"Naruto-niisan!" And he remember the red-hair and mist.

A wide grins split their faces.

He grinned back.

There wasn't much else to say. He didn't want to tell them about being Ninja. He could see their headbands. They already knew. They didn't moan about D-rank missions because they had no idea. Instead they had on gumboots instead of proper shoes, a dress similar to Sakura's genin days and much to much innocence. The didn't know the war they were going to lead, going to march into.

"We are going to be ninja, Naruto-niisan" Midori piped up (from the right)

"Just the like you Naruto-niisan!" Naomi smiled (from the left)

"But we don't want to be Hokage," (from the right)

"We don't want to be that good." (from the left)

"We want to be what you said being Ninja was about." (right)

"We want to protect our _precious _people" (left)

(right left right left right left)

May be they did not know of the march of ninja. But the knew the march of life.

--

It turned out Kakashi was right, the twins did possess a Kekki Genki. It was strange and didn't actually make a lot of sense. But Sakura had been potting plants for her window box. She had been quiet depressed because her jasmine plant had died.

"Bugger, not again" she muttered.

"Don't worry Sakura-chan." Naomi said, gently she reached forward and pressed her fingers into the base of the plant and the plant surged up and Sakura was stunned as the leaves regained their colour and began springing back up.

She immediately took out a planted a seed called in Midori from the other room and asked them to make it grow.

Two perfectly healthy gardenia's grew.

Sakura blinked, took them both by hand and led them straight to the Hokage's office, making them demonstrate in front of Hokage, who called in Neji Hyuuga and Kakashi and asked '_what _in the _blazes _are they _doing_?'

The further that it was experimented it was found that it was a way similar to Yamato's wood manipulation but with out the ability of shape manipulation. They could cause something to grow at different pace according to the amount of chakra they added. It was the _type_ of chakra, explained Neji, it runs in stimulation with the plant.

It was also noted that as much as they could give, the could take and it was proved that when they were asked to 'kill' a mature oak tree.

It took all of three seconds as the tree lost all its leaves, lost its colour and literally _died_.

No one ever made them do it again because the tears that they poured were so sincere it was as if the tree was _alive_ to them.

To which pointed Neji out, the way the chakra reacted to them, it almost was.

--

When their genin team leader informed the council that the twins had made their first kill, there was some sort of shocked silence.

Kakashi had had to leave. Not because he wanted to cry, it wasn't because of that.

He just wanted to see if they were alright.

Instead he found them in the clearing where they normally trained and they were doing some sort of gypsy dance, around them the ground began to spring up in flower, despite that it was autumn.

It suddenly seemed fitting that they wouldn't truly comprehend the death of a human like they had the oak tree. They had been around that oak tree. If he was right, they had killed to protect their team mate.

How could they care for something when they didn't know the full impact it normally had on any one else?

These were the girls, who he heard remark that for their two year intermission had said they had lived in a forest, among other places.

It just made sense that death of a human would mean nothing to them.

--

End part 2

--

There was a serious point to this, I _swear_. But I lost it. Anyways, that's the end of this random story. Hope you liked it for its randomness and weird reflection of society. I don't think this had a point, but I tried nonetheless.

--

After.a.hard.day

--


End file.
